I am new to linux and was wondering whether it is possible to create abbreviations that can be used in terminal. I know about alias command, but am not sure whether that can be used for what I am looking for.

Example: Say I often need to copy stuff from folder ~/Dropbox/thisfolder. I know that I can create a shortcut to switch to this folder by creating an alias, such as,

alias tf="cd ~/Dropbox/thisfolder"

However, if I do

alias justpath="~/Dropbox/thisfolder"

then, I cannot use commands such as cp justpath/blahfile ./. Is it possible to do something like this using some other way to abbreviate the path ~/Dropbox/thisfolder?

I use symlinks, which I collect in a "shallow" easily accessible directory, like ~/Desktop. This way the short paths are shell-agnostic. The only caveat is to be careful running recursive commands on the symlink dir (tell them to not follow symlinks).
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jw013May 18 '12 at 1:36

1

This depends a lot on your shell; there are several good ways in zsh
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Michael Mrozek♦May 18 '12 at 1:41